Over the course of nine days, the Seattle International Dance Festival will host dozens of dancers from around the U.S. and the globe, with several hailing from across Asia. These pages have delved into the broad range of dance presented at SIDF several times over the past decade, including twice since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022 and 2023.
In 2025, among the many Asian and Asian American dancers and choreographers coming to Seattle’s Capitol Hill for SIDF are Project CHAM, T.O.B. Group, and Meta Dance Project, all from South Korea. Also hailing from South Korea is the Soo d Art Company, led by Jung Soo-dong.
Soo-dong’s journey to SIDF has been a year in the making, starting when he performed at the ARTSinTank Festival in Seoul in 2024. “The work called Terminal has been performed several times in ‘open spaces’ outside of theaters,” Soo-dong reported. “At that time, I won the ‘Best Choreography Award’ and was invited to perform at the Seattle International Dance Festival in 2025.”
Terminal explores the past and present via place and memory, in order to expand what Soo-dong calls the body-space. “Last year, when I performed in Seoul, I performed at the Cultural Reserve Base-TANK 1 Space,” he said. “It was an open space, and the ‘sounds’ of people and the ‘sounds’ of music spread out in that space, making it feel like a three-dimensional space.”
Aspects of movement important in Terminal include passing through and intersection. “The concept is ‘the beginning and the end’ of the terminal, ‘the darkness and light in the tunnel’, and the past and the present,” Soo-dong elaborated. “Through this concept, the work looks back at the present self as we enter and exit the ‘past and the present me’ through objects or props.”
Terminal’s reach aims for the global and regional. “It is about ‘meeting and crossing’ while traveling to various countries,” Soo-dong said. “Seattle is attractive because of its local characteristics where ‘sea and land’ coexist.”
And with an awareness of arrival and departure, as well as meeting and parting during the festival, Terminal’s focus is also hyper-local. “In line with the proscenium arch form of the performance, it is being carried out with a focus on empathy and communication with the audience,” Soo-dong explained. “And the relationship with the objects, lighting, and a circular object that can connect the stage space and the audience space, located exactly in the middle, we want to create a ‘passage’ that can connect the audience and the stage.”
Also spanning the distance between Asia and the U.S. is the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, hailing from China and New York City, and creating work that focuses on the immigrant journey. Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company was founded in 1988 by Nai-Ni Chen (1959-2021) who trained in traditional Chinese dance in Taiwan, and the company continues under the leadership of her husband, Andy Chiang.
Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company brings one of its signature pieces, The Way of Fire, to SIDF. “Jacek Luminski, our partner in Poland who has been to the SIDF Festival, introduced us to Cyrus,” Chiang said, of SIDF’s Executive Artistic Director Cyrus Khambatta. “Cyrus told us about the mission and accomplishments of the SIDF Festival and we felt that the works of our company would be of interest to the Seattle audience and SIDF festival participants.”
Chiang describes The Way of Fire as a cross-cultural work. “It illustrates how immigrants bring our cultures to America,” he said, “and working with new ideas can have amazing results, giving new experiences to audience members in surprising ways.”
The entire Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company are looking forward to engaging with SIDF’s artists and audiences. “It is always challenging logistically to bring a group of dancers out of their hometown and arrange for housing, rehearsals, tech, lighting, and performance,” Chiang said. “To make a successful program, we also have to listen to the festival and learn from the diverse audience in Seattle.”
Also connecting with SIDF audiences this year are several dance artists based in the U.S., including Project Convergence which combines the Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam and American tap dance, as well as Hana Shiozaki, who specializes in butoh, eco-somatics, and interdisciplinary performance, having performed solo works at the Salish Sea and Seattle Butoh Festivals.
Also based in the Pacific Northwest is MiYoung Margolis, the founder & Artistic Director of O-Jak Bridge Art & Dance Festival and the Artistic Director of MiYoung Margolis Dance Collective. “SIDF is one of the most respected stages in the international dance community,” Margolis asserted. “As a Seattle-based artist, it’s a dream platform, and I’m especially honored because this opportunity came directly through my work curating and directing the O-Jak Bridge Art & Dance Festival.”
Margolis will perform two pieces during the festival, the first of which is Threads of Her: Seo-Nang, a revised version of her piece The Goddess: Seo-Nang, which was originally selected for SIDF in 2020 but canceled due to the pandemic. “This isn’t just about presenting a piece,” Margolis said. “It’s about continuing a bridge of cultural storytelling I’ve built with the Seattle community and beyond.”
Threads of Her: Seo-Nang is a ten-minute contemporary ritual piece that Margolis says draws from Korean shamanistic traditions and channels ancestral feminine power through modern movement vocabulary. “The character of Seo-Nang is imagined as a protective matriarch, much like the sacred Seonang-dang trees that stand in the heart of Korean villages,” she described. “These trees, often decorated with cloth offerings, are believed to protect the community like a mother: nurturing, fierce, and unwavering.”
Margolis seeks to highlight the unseen strength of women. “The choreography explores the duality of softness and strength, tender, flowing gestures juxtaposed with sharp, decisive movements,” she said. “The piece is a fusion of Martha Graham-inspired contemporary dance and Korean traditional movement, especially elements from geommu, Korean sword dance, which adds both precision and ritualistic elegance to the choreography.”
Though named for Seo-Nang, the piece is intended to broadly recognize women. “It’s about the generational spirit of feminine guardianship, intuition, and power that protects and defines a community,” Margolis shared. “It’s a love letter to the unseen mothers of history.”
The MiYoung Margolis Dance Collective will also present Hanji Soul. “This work fuses Korean hanji paper art with live performance, telling a textured story of resilience and transformation through the body,” Margolis said. “In addition, my hanji mixed media artworks will be on display throughout the opening weekend in the Broadway Performance Hall lobby, presented by Gallery B612, which I curate and operate.”
The piece is based upon the perception of hanji rice paper as translucent and fragile. “When layered, pressed, and bound together, hanji becomes incredibly durable and resilient, strong enough to serve as doors or walls in traditional Korean homes,” Margolis clarified. “This piece draws inspiration from that transformation, how something that appears soft and thin can hold immense strength, quiet determination, and elegance.”
Margolis aims to bring hanji into motion through connection between dancers. “Timing, relationship, and trust play crucial roles in how the dancers move through space together,” she said. “It’s not just dance, it’s a living embodiment of the emotional textures within hanji itself.”
Despite the challenges of an ankle injury and the complex coordination required or each dance piece within the festival, Margolis is thrilled for this opportunity. “SIDF gives us the rare chance to share culturally rooted, emotionally charged stories, like my Korean contemporary pieces, on a global stage,” she said. “There’s something irreplaceable about the energy of a festival setting, the exchange, the momentum, the shared heartbeat of artists from all over the world.”
Seattle International Dance Festival runs June 7 to 15 at Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway, Seattle.
